BruisedCrew

Cardinals pitchers are hitting better than the heart of the Brewers order.

These are the Cardinals back end starters continuing the Brewers hitting slump. The good ones come tomorrow and Thursday.

Playing from behind again in the first inning.

Another GD lead off walk.The Cardinals are masters at cashing these in.

On the subject of runs by inning, I don’t think anything would help the Brewers out of their offensive doldrums than getting 2 or 3 runs in the first or second inning. That might help the hitters relax and concentrate on putting the ball in play instead of trying to hit the big home run. For the last week the Brewers haven’t been able to string hits together, so most of their runs have come on solo HRs or with the aid of a lot of walks served up by Cubs pitchers.

Clicking around BRef & it looks like this link has a table of how many times they have scored 1 run, 2 runs, 3 runs, etc, in each inning over the course of the season... https://stathead.com/baseball/inning_summary.cgi?year=2021&team_id=MIL&utm_medium=br&utm_source=team-inning-sum&utm_campaign=baseball&__hstc=107817757.06df2a44e3a0168d58bb81526b61cd36.1629481267153.1632245369903.1632250542308.49&__hssc=107817757.13.1632250542308&__hsfp=3520052351 Drawing an arbitrary line at 3 runs or more and calling that a Big Inning the Brewers distribution of Big Innings by inning would be as follows... 1st Inning: 7 times 2nd Inning 6 times 3rd Inning: 6 times 4th Inning: 8 times 5th Inning: 9 times 6th Inning: 16 times 7th Inning: 13 times 8th Inning: 8 times 9th Inning: 5 times The interesting thing about this is that, for the NL as a whole, the first and second innings produce significantly more big innings than the others. So, the Brewers pattern is not typical of others. You’d have to look game by game to see how many of these late big innings turn games around and how many are piling on against back end relievers in games that are already pretty much won. We can all remember games in which the Brewers broke open a close game with a big inning. The 10 run 8th against the Cubs that turned a 4-4 tie into a 14-4 lead comes Richthofen to mind. I would love to see more big innings early because they can take the pressure off the pitcher, who doesn’t feel like he has to be perfect to keep the team in the game.

How many players are in your league? 2? How do you have all those guys? Only 6. It makes for more fun teams and a much faster draft. I have won the league 5 years in a row, but losing Trout and deGrom and Yelich being useless torpedoed me this year.

I'll be left with a tough decision in one of my keeper fantasy leagues... Is Yelich even considered a keeper any longer at this point? I'll be deciding between Yelich, Muncy, Giolito, Framber Valdez, Freddy Peralta, and Bassitt for my final 2 keepers. I will be keeping Guerrero Jr, Bichette, Soto, Woodruff, Scherzer, and deGrom. Need to pick 2 of the other list, as we keep 8 total. I have Yelich on my Fantasy team and I will definitely not be keeping him for next year. For most of this season I didn’t even start him, but held him in case he got hot. We have 5 keepers and DeGrom, Scherzer, Trout, Jose Ramirez, Bogaerts, Machado, and Woodruff would all be ahead of Yelich.

If they don't, it will obviously cause some consternation among the fanbase. But in the scheme of the season, it isn't likely to matter. The Cardinals are on a hot streak. They'll cool off ... simply because they aren't an overly talented club. They are playing WAY over their heads right now. Their starting rotation is being held together by duct tape and binder twine. They are getting timely hits, and eeking out a lot of close wins. It will eventually catch up with them. Because it's baseball. Like you said in the thread that you started, it’s time to wrap up the division. Last week at this time the talk was about whether the Brewers would clinch the division before they came home. I was hoping to see the clincher on Sunday. I didn’t expect the Brewers offense to take the week off or for the Cardinals to waltz through 6 games against supposed playoff contenders. I was looking forward to two weeks of following the other playoff races while the Brewers had their spot locked up. A sweep in this series would definitely cause some consternation, if not aggravation. It would raise the very real possibility that a suddenly tight Brewers team would be going to St. Louis still needing a win to wrap things up. Just score some runs and win a game and get it over with. It shouldn’t be that difficult for a team that people think can win 100 games and be a serious World Series contender.

All that I ask at this point is one Brewers win in this series. A dominating pitching performance or an offensive outburst can do it. Woodruff vs Woodford on paper should be a positive matchup for the Brewers, but they have to perform on the field.

If they have a better offense than the Brewers, they haven’t shown it over the course of the season. The Cardinals rank 24th in MLB in runs scored per game (4.24), just behind the Royals and just ahead of the Dbacks, Orioles, Mets, Marlins, Rangers, and Pirates. The Brewers are 10th overall in runs scored per game (4.64) and 5th best in the NL. These Cardinals takes tonight feel like the epitome of recency bias. They’ve had a good stretch lately, but they’ve also had their share of struggles throughout the season. A few weeks ago the Braves were the hot team in the NL and everyone in the AL was saying “here come the Yankees.” Then their hot streaks ended and those teams went back to being something more closely resembling what they’ve been over the course of the season. I expect something similar from the Cardinals. When we get to this stage of the season recent and current performance becomes more important than season long statistics. Since August 1, the Brewers and Cardinals have virtually identical numbers of runs scored and runs allowed. The Cardinals have scored 218 runs to the Brewers 217, and both have allowed 171 runs. The Brewers are 29-16 over that stretch and the Cardinals are 28-17. But, over the last week, the Cardinals offense is hot and the Brewers offense is not. As Counsell noted in his post game comments last night, the Brewers have had a “dry week” at the plate except for a couple of innings (which came against the Cubs). That means that the pitching has to be almost perfect for the Brewers to win. Unless the offense comes out of this funk, or the pitchers can come up with a shutout or 1 run game against a potent offense, the Brewers aren’t going to win a game in this series, regardless of how many runs they have scored over the course of the season.

Orlando Arcia would 100% be offered one, teams pretty much offer rings to everyone that was on the team at any point in the year. The likes of Zach Godley, Jordan Zimmerman, and John Axford would likely be offered rings too. Of course a player can decline if they so choose. Probably easier to just offer it to everyone versus trying to decide what constitutes worthy of a ring. Wouldn’t it almost be embarrassing to have a ring if you made a token appearance for a team and did nothing to even help them win a game? Or like Sal Romano whose only contribution was negative.

They shouldn’t be on cruise control yet. If the Brewers are on cruise control 7 losses to the Cardinals are a near certainty. It takes a focused effort to beat a good team that is hot and playing sound fundamental baseball.

Need a big game from Woodruff tomorrow or a sweep by the Cards is going to look like a real possibility. The offense is looking pretty lost.

Cardinals lead off walk = run Brewers lead off walk = DP No Cubs bullpen to bail out the struggling Brewers offense tonight.

Matt Carpenter and his .175 BA emerges from his coffin to bite the Brewers.

A feeble inning from the top of the order.

Lead off walks kill.

The Brewers aren’t making Lester work hard. Just 49 pitches and no base runners to deal with.

Everyone thought the Phillies were the team to beat in 2011 too.

Really? You realize if we beat them only once in the 7 games we play them they would have to win out and we would have to lose out for them to tie us right? I just hope that if the Brewers are going to lose 6 out of 7 to the Cards (like the 2011 Brewers lost 5 of 6 to the eventual World Series winners in September) that the one win comes this week. I don’t even want to think about not having the division wrapped up before the Cardinals-Dodgers road trip. At least these Cardinals don’t have Rafael (Babe) Furcal to torment us in September.

Really? You realize if we beat them only once in the 7 games we play them they would have to win out and we would have to lose out for them to tie us right? I just hope that if the Brewers are going to lose 6 out of 7 to the Cards (like the 2011 Brewers lost 5 of 6 to the eventual World Series winners in September) that the one win comes this week. I don’t even want to think about not having the division wrapped up before the Cardinals-Dodgers road trip. At least these Cardinals don’t have Rafael (Babe) Furcal to torment us in September.

And they clear Bradley’s spot in the lineup.

A home run derby contest is breaking out.

Having Garcia in the lineup is nice.