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.
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