My goodness, how many different ways can this team lose this season? Just one day after Brewers fans rallied together in their disgust over Jeff Suppan, Ken Macha steps up to the plate to become public enemy number one instead. The backlash you'll hear about Macha for the next 24 hours results in his decision to keep Chris Narveson in the game at a point where Narveson probably should have been lifted. It's always hard for me to debate whether a guy should stay in or be taken off the hook, but in hindsight all we can really say is that keeping Narveson in was a bad decision, a decision which was made by Ken Macha.
The situation was this: Chris Narveson had been pitching very well through five innings, but started to unravel a bit in the 6th inning. He was losing a bit of his command, and he all but lost his ability to get his pitches down. The Marlins had plated one run to narrow their deficit to 4-1, but there were two men on the bases with Cody Ross at the plate. Narveson was already at 100 pitches, and there were two outs already down in the inning.
You'd like to see Narveson get out of the mess he made, feel good about his outing, and save the bullpen for just one more inning. That's the ideal situation. But that wasn't what happened on Monday, as instead Narveson gave up a three run bomb to Ross, and then the Marlins managed to score another three runs in the inning. They entered the 6th inning down 4-0, but left the 6th inning with a 7-4 lead. But it's an inning that could have been avoided.
Ken Macha did come out to talk to Narveson before he was to face Cody Ross, but it was basically to ask him how he was feeling. With Narveson not being the kind of guy that is going to want to be taken out of the ballgame, Chris said he was fine and believed he could continue. Well, he was wrong, and by Narveson continuing to pitch the Marlins were able to take the lead and then extend it in the inning afterward, eventually winning this contest 13-5.
The game actually became quite comical in the later innings, as defensive miscues by the Brewers allowed the Marlins to make this thing look worse than it needed to be. After making us fall in love with him for hitting yet another home run, Corey Hart showed why he still is a defensive liability by allowing a ball to get by him in the sixth. Carlos Gomez couldn't get to a Cameron Maybin line drive in the seventh, which allowed Maybin to hit an inside-the-park home run. Errors by the Marlins allowed the Brewers to score later on as well, but by then it was far too late, this one was over.
So Macha will continue to be on the hot seat, at least with Brewers fans, and we'll continue to watch our pitching ruin what has been a very solid season offensively so far for Milwaukee. I don't see things getting much better on Tuesday as we trot Dave Bush out there, but we do have Yovani again on Wednesday and we'll see how well Capuano has recovered on Thursday.
POTG: Rickie Weeks.
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