Every once in a while, I like to get away from writing about college football. It’s not like there’s any shortage of storylines at this point, nor any shortage of opinions about those storylines, but let’s put that aside, just for these few hundred words.
On occasion—probably more often than I take a break from writing about the Badgers—my column gets submitted to my editors a little later in the evening than they’d prefer. This is one of those nights.
It’s a little after 7:30 p.m., and after being in class most of the day, I get home to find the Brewers leading the Pirates 2-0 in the top of the fifth inning. Bases loaded, one out. Aramis Ramirez (.294, 24 HR, 92 RBI) is batting. Nice.
When I went about plotting a general schedule for my semester, not a whole lot of time was penciled in for watching baseball. After all, the Milwaukee Brewers didn’t ink a whole lot of wins through the first four months of the season, and maybe it’s just me, but playing spoiler isn’t going to drag me away from productive things like HBO Go.
Ramirez just grounded into a double play. The only thing I trust less than the Brewers taking a narrow lead into the late innings is taking a big lead into the late innings, so at least there’s that.
After all, the Brewers traded Zack Greinke, the undisputed ace of their pitching staff, July 27 in the midst of a seven-game losing streak. Their record stood 44-54, but it felt a lot worse. In Greinke’s last start on July 24, everybody knew it was essentially a tryout for just about every contending team in baseball. Greinke breezed through seven shutout innings on just 87 pitches against Philadelphia. The bullpen was in shambles, but Greinke was lifted. He hadn’t pitched in nine days, the Brewers were up 6-0 and management didn’t want to tax his arm knowing he would likely be traded.
The Brewers lost that game 7-6. They lost all three games of that series against the Phillies 7-6 after holding big leads in all three.
Marco Estrada has now breezed through six innings. The Brewers now have posted 24 consecutive scoreless innings since the Mets scored two runs in the ninth inning Saturday. Rookie shortstop Jean Segura tripled to leadoff the seventh, Estrada beats a drawn-in infield and Norichika Aoki lays a Texas-leaguer into center. Two on, nobody out, 3-0 Crew.
Since that day, the Brewers are 31-18. They’ve won 21 of their last 27 entering play Wednesday. Instead of 12.5 games out of the second wild card spot, they’re 2.5 behind the St. Louis Cardinals.
That promising inning ended when Rickie Weeks hit into a double play and Ryan Braun struck out. It’s still OK.
This year’s team has been a bit of an anomaly from the start. They were hit hard by injuries early, but the offense held its own. The starting pitching was decent too, despite injuries to Chris Narveson and Shaun Marcum. But that bullpen. Atrocious doesn’t begin to describe it. Every time the team led in the late innings, it honestly felt like they’d lose. Most of the time they did, and it got to the point it was comical.
Now, closer John Axford—who lost the job during the bullpen’s slump, only to reclaim it because everyone else was just as bad—has converted 11 save opportunities in a row.
Marco Estrada is now through seven innings on 96 pitches. No Brewers pitcher has thrown a complete game this year. Estrada won’t tonight. Writing about how bad the bullpen was all year isn’t helping at the moment.
There are a couple interesting things about the Brewers’ position at this point in 2012, beyond the fact that just about everyone—including management, who said it would be looking at young pitching in September to try to get a feel for the 2013 rotation—figured they were dead in the water 45 days ago.
Without the second wild card, this wouldn’t matter. Atlanta has had a stranglehold on the top spot for a while.
Jim Henderson, the 29-year-old rookie with 10 seasons in the minors under his belt, navigates around two base runners in the eighth. St. Louis leads Houston 3-0 in the sixth. Milwaukee goes quietly in the top of the ninth. Andrew McCutchen ends the Brewers’ shutout streak at 26 innings with an opposite-field home run. It’s 3-1. If Axford’s hair grows six inches in the next few minutes, I’m giving up.
It’s also hard to gauge what the emotions of Brewers fans will be like if (when) Milwaukee falls just short of making the postseason. Disappointment is the obvious answer, but they’re also playing with house money at this point. A month ago we’d have been happy if top pitching prospect Wily Peralta looked good in a couple starts. He threw eight shutout innings Sunday in the thick of a playoff race. Sure, I’ll wonder what-if. One measly blown save here, one more run on an otherwise miserable July evening.
But at the end of the day, it’s September and I’m watching baseball every night. I’ll never, ever complain about that.
Ax gives up a broken-bat single but his hair stays short and the Brewers win 3-2.
At the moment, they’re two games out. At worst, it’ll be 2.5 games Thursday morning. Ride on, Milwaukee.
Do you think the Brewers can catch St. Louis for the final NL wild card spot? Email Parker at pgabriel15@gmail.com
