The majority of the changes in these patches are just tweaking scripts and unit variables. This is something a balance designer would normally do, not a programmer.
If you remember, they said the delay to the original vet-fix was they needed programmers to do some fixing (meaning it was outside of their abilities).
The majority of bugs and issues with the game was down to the poor QA and shitty work done by Brad tweaking the games high level scripts and unit variables. I honestly believe he was let go due to the embarrassment of the patches.
Well, yes and no, designer MAY change the values, but it is up to developer to build a patch for it as its a lil bit more then clicking "overwrite" button.
Every game company has tracking and statistics involved with every patch launch and the leads probably noticed the amount of patches and hotfixes for the patches and hotfix for the patches patch that kept happening.
1) No need to tell me this really

2) You don't really need statistics to see these things, community manager informing of issues as they appear and product director who doesn't have head up his rear armor is enough to make a noise. Designers themselves aren't(shouldn't at least) be locked out of the outer world either.