Series 50 - Milwaukee Brewers @ Cincinnati Reds September 19 - September 21 at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, OHThankfully this 10 game roadtrip is coming to an end, but we gotta get through Cincinnati to get back home to Milwaukee. You can never overlook a team that is out of contention for the playoffs, because they are so pissed off about their season that they want nothing more than to ruin your season. Or at least it appears that way. I do believe that is why they call it playing spoiler to the other team. I know that the Reds are in evaluation mode right now (so much for being picked to be the surprise team to win the NL Central) but I'd rather like it if the Reds could just let the Brewers win a few here and take it easy on them. But no one in their right mind would ever do that, so we just have to go out there and hope for the best. I'm getting tired of wishing, hoping, yearning, praying for some miracle, and all that bogus jazz. I want results, and I want them now. But I have to be patient and let the rest of the season play out, and be satisfied with the results. Those results better be damn good or I'm about to flip out again after yet another disappointing Brewers season. But not yet - gotta lay 'em out for them to play 'em out. This sucker isn't over yet, no matter how bleak things have been looking lately. So on with the wrap-up.
Game 1 (Friday) - Jeff Suppan (10-10, 5.06 ERA) vs Ramon Ramirez (1-0, 2.45 ERA)
This game was just downright ugly. I'm really not sure that I have seen many games as bad as this one, and I at least can be thankful that this kind of thing doesn't happen every day. Jeff Suppan was nothing like his former late season dominant self, and in fact, he was quite the opposite. He allowed 3 runs off of 6 pitches to open the game, and it just got worse after that. By the time that he was out of the ball game, he had given up 5 runs off of 5 hits and 2 homeruns. Manny Parra was asked to come in the game and eat up some innings, and even though he went 4 innings tonight, he also gave up 5 runs. But he one-upped Suppan by allowing 4 homeruns. Tim Dillard gave up yet another homerun to the Reds in the 8th inning, making it a total of 7 homeruns that the Reds hit today. Yikes. I read after the game that the Pepsi smokestacks out in centerfield ran out of fireworks because they shot off too many of them during the game. Bill and Brian were saying that it was like a heavy fog was rolling in off of the Ohio River. I just hope that the fog was strong enough to push this game out of my memory, because it certainly is strong enough to push our playoff hopes further and further away. Final score Reds 11, Brewers 2.
Brewers record : 84 - 70, 2nd place NL Central (9 games back of Chicago), 2nd place NL Wild Card (2 games behind Philadelphia)
Game 2 (Saturday) - CC Sabathia (15-10, 2.85 ERA) vs Johnny Cueto (9-13, 4.62ERA)
Things were getting worse by the day. One of the reasons that the Brewers signed Jeff Suppan is because he is a consistent veteran pitcher who has been there before and is not supposed to feel the pressure in the big games. He's supposed to perform at times like yesterday when the Brewers needed him most. As you can tell by the results, that didn't happen. In fact, it was far from it. So that's why this game was huge. We needed to rebound badly, and we once again turned to CC Sabathia to bail us out of this current predicament. CC didn't pitch all that bad, but he pitched bad enough to suffer his 2nd loss as a Brewer and his 2nd in a row after losing to the Cubs last time out. CC allowed 4 runs, but only 1 of them was earned thanks to Prince Fielder's 16th error of the season. With all this talk of Chad Johnson legally changing his name to Chad Ocho Cinco, I think that we should all persuade Prince Fielder to legally change his name to Prince Error. Cause he certainly isn't much of a fielder. It's simply inexcusable for a 1st baseman to commit that many errors in a year. After all, 1st base isn't really that hard. Besides left field, it's the easiest position to play. You just stand there are people throw you the ball. Wow, sounds real tough Prince. Way to cost this one. I was upset big time because the Wildcard is slipping away, but I was super pissed off because we were watching the game over at my Aunt Linda's house. My cousin Tyler is a huge Cubs fan, and he kept on reminding me that the Brewers lost and the Cubs won, and that the Cubs won the National League Central Division title. Yeah, like I needed to be reminded that we totally suck right now. And then he made it even worse (it was possible) by wearing an Alfonso Soriano jersey style t-shirt. When I saw it, I told him that there was only 1 player on the Cubs that I hated more than Soriano, and that was Carlos Zambrano. While I was busy drowning my sorrows in a glass of Captain and Diet Mountain Dew, the kid goes and changes into his Zambrano jersey t-shirt. I wanted to give him an atomic wedgie so bad, but I didn't because he's probably still feeling the effects of the one that James gave him like 4 years ago on the 3rd of July at the Lakefront. No need to further scar the kid. After all, he's already got it bad enough cause he's a Cubs fan. The Brewers tried to put up enough runs to cover the 4 that CC gave up, but surprise surprise, they couldn't scrape together a few runs. Tell me if you've ever heard that one before. So once again we failed to win a game when CC is on the mound. Damn it. It's looking very bleak, and with a week to go, we're 2 1/2 games back in the Wildcard race. Egads. But we're not mathematically eliminated, and that my friend, is all that counts right now. Final score Reds 4, Brewers 3.
Brewers record : 84 - 71, 2nd place NL Central, 2nd place NL Wild Card (2 1/2 games behind the New York Mets)
Game 3 (Sunday) - Seth McClung (5-6, 4.17 ERA) vs Bronson Arroyo (15-11, 4.66 ERA)
So after losing games 1 and 2 of this series, the Brewers turned to Seth McClung (?!?) to stop the bleeding and right this ship back into the winning direction. And for the most part, he succeeded. He went a shade over 3 innings, but only gave up 1 run, which would be the only run that the Reds would score today. Knowing that, you need to stand up and give a nice applause to the bullpen (including McClung) for limiting the Reds from scoring today so that the offense could have a chance to put up some runs without ever being behind and playing in a pressurized comeback mode. Coffey, Villanueva, Gagne, Mota and Torres all chipped in to keep the Reds off of the board, and Svuem is showing good managerial skills in using all of his available resources to win games at all costs. The Brewers were going up against Bronson Arroyo, who has been putting together a very nice 2nd half this year, so I knew it would be a tough game for the Brewers to scrape out a win. But they did just that, and scraped out a rather nice one. Fielder hit a solo homerun in the 2nd to keep his scorching hot streak going. And then the Brewers did something that they haven't been doing lately - they tacked on some runs. Fielder collected 2 more RBIs today when he doubled in Braun and Counsell in the 4th. The Reds committed an error in the 5th that allowed 2 more runs to score, and luck was finally starting to swing back on our side. This was one Sunday that you wouldn't catch me watching football (although my roommates insisted that I put football on the main TV in HD so that everyone could be happy and I could watch the Brewers game on the secondary TV) because there were bigger and better things on TV. I had the Mets game constantly updating on my iPod, and rejoiced when the Brewers won and the Mets lost, to cut their deficit in the Wildcard race to 1 1/2 games. With 6 games left to go (all at home) and 1 1/2 games between us and the playoffs, this is about to get really ridiculously interesting and exciting. Hell, I've been along for the ride for 156 games, why would I suddenly get off? Final score Brewers 7, Reds 1.
Brewers record : 85 - 71, 2nd place NL Central, 2nd place NL Wild Card (1 1/2 games behind the New York Mets)
So the Brewers take the final game of this series, and finish with a winning record on the road at 41-40. They haven't had a winning road record for some time, so that's got to be a good sign that better things are on the horizon. We've got a good record at home and a good one on the road, but none of that really matters unless we are at least 1 game better than the next best team. As we've seen in previous years like 1992 (when we finished 92-70 but did not make the playoffs because there was no Wildcard team in the playoffs) your record really doesn't mean squat if you aren't playing baseball in October. The last roadtrip of the year was really rough on this team, but the good news is that they would be coming back home to play the Pirates and the Cubs. The Brewers have totally owned the Pirates this year and are currently 11-1 against them. And the Chicago Cubs have already clinched the NL Central, so they most likely will be resting some of their starters. If they still do happen to play their regulars, you'd have to imagine that they won't be giving it their all, because there is no real reason to do it. So we got that going for us. I only know one thing for sure - this thing is really gonna come down to the last minute and I'm gonna love every single minute of it. But we'll see about that. No sense getting all excited about something later that I don't have any control over right now. But it feels so good that baseball still matters to people in Milwaukee that aren't named Scott Andrew Reck. See you in a few...
Next up - September 23 (Tuesday) - September 25 (Thursday) Milwaukee Brewers vs Pittsburgh Pirates at Miller Park in Milwaukee, WI
- pookon -
email : pookondotcom@gmail.com
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i'm not a true follower since i don't have a blogger account or anything but where it says "follow my blog" just know that my name is under there.
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