Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Crew Drops the Rubber Match

The Brewers had plenty of chances to win this series, but they couldn't come through with a late rally on Wednesday and were downed by the Cardinals 3-2.  The Cardinals came into this series just on fire, especially in their pitching department. They allowed just four runs the entire series, and the Brewers are now just 1-5 in their last six, and have fallen out of first place in the NL Central.

That's the baseball season for you, and it's why their are 162 games. Things ebb and flow all the time in this league, with the Brewers recent box scores being a prime example of that. The Crew had won seven out of eight at one point, but then ran into two teams that were hotter than they were in the Twins and now the Cardinals. You'd like to see Milwaukee play better in games like this, but this week it just wasn't to be.

Cardinals newbie Nick Stavinoha is having a big series against Milwaukee, and probably wishes it would have never ended. He hit his first major league bomb and last night, and then today he collected the first two RBI for St. Louis. Frank Catalanotto (who started in right field, as Braun was alright and back in left) tied the game with a 2-RBI triple in the 4th, but it would be Stavinoha who would score the winning run in the 6th innings for the redbirds. The Cardinals bullpen locked down Milwaukee after that.

Manny Parra was hung with the loss in today's outing, and has dropped to 3-6 on the season. He didn't pitch too terribly - he went 6 2/3 innings allowing three runs and had six strikeouts - but it just wasn't enough to beat St. Louis today.

While Braun was able to return to the lineup, so was J.J. Hardy, who had a pretty nice game. Hardy returned with a 3-for-5 day and scored a run, but was the last out in the 9th inning with two men on base and a chance to either tie or win the ballgame. Still, it's much better to have Hardy in the lineup than it is having him out of it. 

One other interesting fact is that, for a Wednesday afternoon game, Miller Park was packed. The stadium was up to 96% capacity as more than 40,000 saw this one live. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it wasn't on television today, but those are some great numbers for an afternoon affair at the end of May. Keep up the good work, Wisconsin.


Player of the Game: Frank Catalanotto, welcome to the standings.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Today's turnout was pretty impressive for a Wednesday afternoon game in May. I say it's mostly because the Crew is playing good ball. Heck last year I thought 35,000 for a Wednesday June game was something!

Anonymous said...

I was at the game today & at one point I just stopped, looked around & wondered what month we were in.

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