Are The Brewers That Bad or Are The Yankees That Good?

The Brewers had high hopes as they traveled east last week to Yankee Stadium, aka ‘The House That Ruth Built.’ Technically, Ruth didn’t build this version (or the last two for that matter), but it is a common moniker for the stadium in the Bronx. But it sure looked like this year’s version of the Yankees had a whole lotta Babe Ruth's hacking away for them at the dish.

Led by Aaron Judge’s four home runs, the Bronx Bombers belted 15 of them in the three-game sweep of the Brewers, who are suddenly struggling to find a pitcher who can keep the ball in the park. Not to be outdone, Jazz Chisholm slammed three homers, while Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe each have a pair of jacks to their credit.

The Brewers played a decent game on Opening Day on Thursday, but due to a bad bounce on a ball hit by Judge that struck the third base bag and bounced over Vinny Capra’s head, the Yankees snuck out with a 4-2 win. Unfortunately, the other two games weren’t even close.

Maybe the day off didn’t help Nestor Cortes’ nerves. Maybe he had too much rest. No matter. The first three pitches on Saturday served up (literally) by him were turned into souvenirs by Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, and Judge. And then, to add insult to the already-injured Brewers staff, Wells added a wall-scraper to give the Yanks a 4-0 lead after one.

And it would only get worse.

Although Milwaukee made a contest of it with three ‘small-ball’ runs in the second to cut the lead to 4-3, the Yankees tromped on the gas pedal the rest of the way with homers by Volpe, Judge, Chisholm, Judge (again), and Oswald Peraza en route to a football-like score of 20-9. Connor Thomas, not wanting to be left out in his major league debut, gave up three taters, while Chad Patrick allowed one in his first game as a big leaguer.

All that was with the wind blowing out (mostly) on a nice 75-degree day. Sunday was a different story, weather-wise, with a blustery, cloudy, 45-degree day greeting frozen fans and players alike. No matter: New York treated their guests rudely again, slamming three homers off Brewer starter Aaron Civale and one dinger off Joel Payamps in a 12-3 win. Brewer players were probably in such a hurry to get out of town, they didn’t even take showers.

It is now up to manager Pat Murphy to patch up the bedraggled pitching staff and put some wins on the board. If you had told me that one team would be winless in the NL Central after their first three games, I probably wouldn’t have picked Milwaukee for that dubious ‘honor.’

The Brewers' other slow starts:

·       1970 (0-3)

·       1984 (0-5)

·       2001 (0-4)

·       2003 (0-6)

·       2011 (0-4)

·       2015 (0-4)

The combined score of this year's opening games was 36-14. In 2003, the St. Louis Cardinals scored 24 runs in the first three games of the season against the Brewers, winning by scores of 11-9, 7-0, and 6-4. Those two dozen runs were dwarfed by this year's three dozen.

Way back in the days of the dinosaurs... err, I mean 1970, the Brewers lost 12-0 in their first-ever game to the California Angels at County Stadium. The second game was a little better, as the Brewers lost by a tally of 6-1 before a whopping crowd of just over 7,500. For the third game of that campaign, they traveled to Chicago to take on the White Sox. The Crew dropped a close 5-4 decision and the loss margin in those three games was the previous high of 18.

Let's end this on a positive note. In 2011, the Brewers rebounded from that 0-4 start to win the NL Central title. Here’s hoping the 2025 Brewers can take some lessons from that team.