Brewers going in circles

It seems that in this point in the season the Brewers can do nothing to escape the .500 mark. They win one, then lose one. Win two then lose 2. Its a cycle that is neither bad but it does get frustrating to watch. After the Brewers took two of three from the Astros they had a good chance to do the same to the Reds today but lost in 10 innings. I could sit here and try and explain why this keeps happening but there isn't much to say and I really just don't know, so here are some thoughts from the games these past 2 series.

• It's nice to see John Axford get back on track. He seems to have regained his stuff and thats good news for the Brewers. His curveball has looked particularly nasty his past couple outings and hopefully this is a trend that continues.
• The offense seems to be going along just nicely which is always nice to see. Braun leads the league in home runs. Prince leads the league in RBI's. This is something we need to have happen. The Brewers scored 24 runs in 3 games against the Astros and 14 in three games against a good pitching staff in Cincinnati.
• The middle relief for the Brewers seems to be struggling at this point. Sean Green can't seem to have an outing without giving up a run. Sergio Mitre has been very hit or miss so far this season. Mitch Stetter is the same, he looks real sharp one outing and then flat the next.
• Yovani Gallardo continues to struggle since his shutout against the Braves. It's very strange to watch because Gallardo looked so good in the beginning of the season and now he can't seem to pitch as good as he can. I'm not sure what it is but it almost seems like he is afraid to go after guys. He continues to appear to try and get guys to chase every pitch instead of just going right after them. Hopefully he can get back on track and be back to how he pitched in his first two starts of the year.
• One reason why I love Wisconsin sports teams so much is the fans, and Brewers fans are some of the best. The day after Braun signed his big extension he got two standing ovations during the game. When Corey Hart came to pinch hit on Tuesday night he got a standing ovation from the crowd. Its nice to see the fans cheer on these guys when they deserve it.
• Even though the Brewers continue to stick around .500 they should finally be getting fully healthy. Hart is back, Weeks and McGehee didn't suffer serious injuries with their hands, Greinke will make one more rehab start and should be back with the team, Hawkins is back and playing and Nyjer Morgan should be back soon also. Once this team gets fully healthy they should be able to get some win streaks going.

There was one game in these two series that I really wanted to go in depth with though and that was Tuesday nights game against the Reds. It was right after we lost 9-6 the previous night and we had Marco Estrada stepping in taking the start. He could not have pitched any better. He pretty much shut down the high powered Reds offense only giving up two hits over seven innings. One of his hits was a two-run home run but he still pitched very well and it was a much needed outing. He deserved to get the win but at least the team won the game. Estrada gave way to Loe who shut down the 8th and Axford closed it out for the save.

The offense was clutch even if it was a little thin. Fielder hit a homer in the second inning to give the Brewers the lead and then Braun homered in the 4h to tie it up. Weeks hit the go-ahead home run in the 8th which was enough to give the Brewers the win.

These are the games I like to see, the whole team clicking. The offense may have been light but it was clutch and thats what you need in a pitchers dual. I can't say enough about how Estrada did that game, he was amazing, and the bullpen did their part at the end. It was such a good game of baseball I just had to point it out. I hope to see more games like this from the Brewers.

With the Brewers getting fully healthy soon they should become a team that can bust out win streaks with ease. They hung around .500 with all the injuries which is what most fans were hoping for and now they should be in prime position to start winning more. It's time we stop hanging around .500.

An off day with something to talk about

I was considering writing a blog about off days and how much they stink. You get so used to your team playing every day its strange on days when they don't play, I don't really know what to do with myself, but the Brewers decided to give the fans something to talk about on this off day.

The Brewers extension on Ryan Braun's contract will keep him with the team through 2020 and we have the option of keeping him one more season after that. He will be 36 when the contract is over so it appears that Braun will be a Brewer his whole career, something that I absolutely love.

When the Brewers gave Braun his original contract I was extremely happy. It as a nice long contract that would keep him with the team for a long time and then he would most likely get a big deal from a big market team and leave, but now it appears he will never leave. This is something you don't see much in baseball anymore, especially with a guy who has talent like Braun and especially staying with a small market team all his career. The fact that year in and year out the only constant will be Braun in a Brewer uniform is a very comforting fact. I could sit here and recite his numbers to you but that is something you already know. Braun is an amazing talent and someone the Brewers needed to keep, not just for his skill set but also to make a face for the franchise. All signs point to Prince leaving after this year and who knows what happens from there, but one thing is that Braun will always be out there on the field.

Another reason I love this move is that Braun has allowed some money to be deferred so that the club can remain competitive, these were his own words. He wants his contract but more importantly he wants to win. This is what I love about Braun, he may run his mouth some times but he gets it done on the field. He is a leader and now will become the face of the franchise. He will get his money but he wants to make sure his team is winning and you just don't see that that much in baseball anymore and its a refreshing site and its nice to know he wants to stay and play here.

Now you can look at it, like where do the Brewers go from here? Braun's deal is more back loaded meaning there could be room in the Brewers budget for one more big free agent....Prince? I know there isn't much hope on that but as a fan I can come up with these crazy ideas in my head. It's nice to see the Brewers make these moves locking up the core guys like Braun, Weeks, Hart,and I for one will love seeing Braun on that field every opening day until 2020.

One step forward, one step back

It's been a while since I have had a chance to update this blog but now when I look at it not much has changed. The Brewers are still .500 but they are higher up in the standings, tonight's games results pending, but not much has changed.

The road trip started off well, with the Brewers easily winning against the Pirates, which has been the norm the past couple seasons. With three games against the Nationals coming up you would believe the Brewers were ready to continue the winning but it was not to be.

The Brewers had a nice rally to tie the game up in the top of the ninth in game one against the Nationals but two errors cost us the game in the bottom of the 10th. Then the Brewers just collapsed the last two games. I didn't get a chance to watch those final two games and I don't really care to, I saw all I really needed to see in the box score. Getting swept by the Nationals is not a thing you want to see. I don't know what happened to the team in that series, but they got outplayed by a team they should have easily won two games out of three against. After getting swept I wasn't looking forward to playing the Phillies.

Game one was against Joe Blanton, a game the Brewers needed, especially because their next two games were against Halladay and Lee. The Brewers took game one but it didn't come easy. Axford blew the save in the top of the 9th and the Brewers took the lead for good with a 3-run 12th inning. The next game was probably the biggest surprise of the Brewers' young season. The Brewers roughed up Halladay and ended his night in the 6th inning. The Brewers won the game 9-0. The Brewers did the same to Cliff Lee, forcing him out after only 6 innings of work but were not able to hold onto the lead and lost 4-3.

So the Brewers took care of business against the Pirates, looked really bad against the Nationals, and looked real good against the Phillies. A 4-4 road trip is never bad but it should have been much better.

Wolf has looked stellar in his past two starts and so did Marcum. Narveson was back on track in the finale against the Phillies, he only made one mistake, the 3-run homer. The bullpen, minus those National games has continued to get the outs when it needed and the offense is still chugging along. We get a nice six game home stand against the Astros and Reds and hopefully the Brewers can duplicate the success they had in their last home stand.

The Brewers also look good on the injury front. Hawkins has rejoined the team and will be removed from the DL on Friday it sounds. Greinke pitched a rehab start in single A and looked good, his return should be soon, and Hart took batting practice and continues to feel good so he should hopefully return soon as well.

Hopefully the Brewers can get on a winning streak and let the injured guys return and give the club a big boost and we can finally get above .500 and stay there.

Home cooking gets Brewers back on track

They were 0-3. They looked flat, life-less, however you want to put it. They looked bad, but they were coming home and one could hope that could be all they needed to get back on track.

It started with the home opener. Things were looking good, taking a lead into the 8th inning but Takeshi Saito gave up two solo home runs and the Brewers lose the game to start the season 0-4. It was another painful loss that made you think horrible thoughts about the team. Maybe we hyped them too much? What if they aren't that good? Then came Gallardo.

Just when the team seemed to be at its lowest Gallardo rose to the challenge and turned in the best performance of his career. A two hit shutout of the Atlanta Braves gave the Brewers the first win of the year. The masterful performance from Gallardo seemed to boost the teams confidence and it carried over into the next game.

The next game Prince Fielder came alive and carried the team offensively going three for four and driving in three runs to lead the Brewers. Marco Estrada looked good minus a three-run home run given up to Jason Heyward. The bullpen shut down the rest of the game and the Brewers had their first winning streak of the season and looked to win their first series of the season with a win the next day.

In the finale against the Braves, Shaun Marcum found his groove for the most part and the Brewers scrapped together just enough runs to pull out the win. The key sequence from this game came from the newest Brewer, Nyjer Morgan. He doubled, then stole third, and scored on an infield grounder by colliding with Braves catcher Brian McCann, knocking the ball out of his glove. This sequence sums up pretty much everything Morgan has done for the team so far. The guy can hit, plan and simple. His speed is unbelievable, he is a real exciting player to watch and has already won over a good majority of Brewer fans with his play. I look forward to seeing more from him this season and hope he can continue this level of play.

Wolf got the start in game one against the Cubs and although the defense was not spot on behind him he still struggled with location and it cost him. Although it is very hard to be successful when you need to acquire extra outs, its his job as a pitcher to put that behind him and get outs, and he was not able to do that. Wolf has had a rough start to the year but we saw how good he can get in the second half of last year and hopefully that Randy Wolf will show up soon because he has looked pretty bad in his two starts this year.

The bad taste left by Wolf's start was quickly washed away the next day with Narveson's fantastic outing. With all the hype around Greinke, Marcum, and Gallardo, Narveson got overlooked by many but you could tell he was beginning to fully figure out the major league level and it has shown this year. After his 7 shut out innings, complimented with 9 strikeouts, one shy of a career high, which came against the Cubs as well, he has started the season with 13 scoreless innings. He looked fantastic in this game, mixing all his pitches well, getting the big outs to escape jams when he needed to and had the strikeout pitch working all night. Fielder did his part yet again with three doubles and four rbi's. It was an all around fantastic game and the Brewers were set up to win back to back series.

In the finale of the series and the home stand, the Brewers found themselves back in "wall-banger" mode hitting three different two-run home runs, and they all came at clutch times. It was obvious right from the get-go that Gallardo did not have his best stuff. He struggled with location, gave up easy pitches to get hit and just didn't look like he had the same pitch quality he had in his shut out. The Brewers fell down 2-0 going into the bottom of the first but Fielder tied it up with a two-out two-run homer to tie it up at 2. In the third the Brewers found themselves down 4-2 but Braun tied it up with his own two-run home run. Then came the biggest one of the game. Finding themselves down 5-4 with two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Casey McGehee hit a pinch-hit two-out two-run home run to give the Brewers the lead. Axford came in and closed the door and the Brewers found themselves back at .500 and heading out on the road after a 5-2 home stand.

This was the team we knew we had. The offense stepped up big. The pitching looked great, minus Wolf. The bullpen stepped up when we needed it for the most part, and it all came together to form a fantastic home stand. Fielder exploded this week hitting .440 with 11 rbi's in the seven games. Narveson continued to shine, and Nyjer Morgan made his case for why he deserves to start every day. With a road trip that contains six out of nine games against the Pirates and Nationals you have to think this hot play will continue and could possibly evolve into an extended winning streak. I stated this team was better than their 0-4 start and they showed it. Now they just need to continue it.

Gallardo gets the Brewers into the win column

No 0-5 start for the Brewers this year! It only took a two hit shutout by Yovani Gallardo to do it as well. Although the Brewers should have blown out the Braves tonight a win is a win and we don't have to see that big fat zero where our wins should be. And of course it was another gem from Yovani Gallardo.

It's been real fun to watch Gallardo grow as a pitcher. At times he gets to fine and his pitch count is in the 70's after three innings. Other times guys can't touch him and he strikes out every batter. But today was different. He was dominating, but not in the way were used to seeing him. He got quick outs, kept guys off balance getting them to ground out. He got double plays the couple times he needed them. It was impressive to watch, and it was desperately needed.

For as rough as the season was to start this is the kind of win that you really want. A dominating pitching performance. The offense couldn't do much but it did just enough to get the win. Gallardo was at his best and one run, which was him, was all he needed. When you look at what went wrong the first four games you say pitching, defense, and slow offense. Well we looked good on defense, great on pitching and the offense still could use some work but it did just enough.

Another thing to note with Gallardo's shutout is this could be the signs of big things to come. He looked good on opening day and he looked great tonight. We have seen Gallardo win a game by himself before but hopefully this trend of starts he has had so far this year is what we will see the rest of the season.

I really don't know where I'm going with this and I'm pretty tired so I'm going to end this. Just know this, it was amazing seeing Gallardo pitch how he did this night and I hope we get to see a lot more of it this season. The Brewers are finally in the win column and this is a win that can propel a team. Lets hope it does just that.

Rough Opening Weekend for Brewers

After coming into the start of the season my hopes were high. Not only were the Brewers set up to be a good team, they started the season against last years division champs, the Cincinnati Reds. It would be a way to gauge our team and see how we stacked up against them. Well it turns out, not to well.

The Brewers should have won the opener but Axford blew the game in the 9th. Marcum had location problems and walked 5 guys in his start, something he never does, and the offense was shut down by Travis Wood. The finale was just bad pitching all around, nobody could get the Reds batters out. As long as the season is, there is still plenty of time to forget about this and come back and be the great team that I know they can be. But like I said earlier it was a way to see how we stack up against last years champs and we got swept and in that final game we looked flat, no energy, not a lot of effort.

Its about the roughest way a team could start the season. It wasn't all bad though. Even though Marcum struggled with command he was really getting into a groove near the end of his start and looked like he found his stuff. He ended with 7 strikeouts and I look to him to have a much better start next time. The offense looked decent these games, but there were too many solo home runs. The difference between the Reds and the Brewers this series when it came to offense was all the Brewers home runs were solo shots where as the Reds always seemed to have one to two guys on base when they hit their home runs.

The defense was going to be an issue and it has already shown up multiple times this series. McGehee's play on Thursday hurt the team, Weeks had an error on Saturday that cost us runs, and Betancourt had an error today that cost us. The old cliche is "defense wins championships." While you need other aspects to win in baseball, defense is huge and we can't be having mistakes like this in every game. It will improve over time (hopefully) but its something that will hurt us bad if it doesn't improve.

It pains me to talk about this series so I'm going to talk about something I really liked from this series. Rickie Weeks started out opening day and the finale in the same way, with a lead off homerun. He already has two home runs and 4 rbi's on the young season. If he remains healthy he looks like he is going to have a monster season and could be very key for the Brewers the rest of the season. Braun also has two home runs on the season, which is a good sign, because we need everybody clicking offensively.

Although there were somethings the Brewers need to improve on, and quick, there were still positive signs this weekend. Getting to come back to Miller Park should help these guys out and they should play much better this week against the Braves and Cubs, at least I hope. It's a young season but we are still waiting on a fully healthy team and this team will play better. It could be worse as well. The Rays got swept and had to put Evan Longoria on the DL. The Red Sox spent all offseason acquiring big name free agents and are 0-3.

A slow start doesn't doom your team, it just means you have to work harder to improve your play and get to the level you need to. That is what this team will do, it will get better.

PS: I have added the option to follow my blog via email. Just type your name in the box and you will be sent emails every time I update the page. So set that up so you don't miss a single post!