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It's mostly bad luck. Ground balls and dump singles found the holes. Guerra was not good today. I don't have a problem with anything Counsell did. Even Adam McCalvy admitted that they blew it on that challenge. If you won't admit he blew it on that one I'm not sure when you could ever find fault with him. I watched the reply and didn't see the jersey move. Clearly others saw it so I believe that he was out. If I watched it now I would probably see it. Would NY have seen it? Maybe. Who knows what they said to Counsell.

It's mostly bad luck. Ground balls and dump singles found the holes. Guerra was not good today. I don't have a problem with anything Counsell did.

This is just bad luck.

Foot not on bag, no tag. Safe.

There have been some nice approaches by the Cubs' hitters in this game.

Doesn't look like rainout weather but wouldn't be surprised to get a delay from a brief thunderstorm.

I had no idea JDLR was still in the big leagues. Good for him.

All fastballs that time.

Would love to see Braun get a third one today. Great to see our veteran step up in a key game.

As a substitute, would you accept a bunch of guys worrying about holding the lead almost before Braun's homer lands in the seats? Because there's been plenty of that already. Lets be honest, we're all thinking about it...

How many do we have to be ahead to feel safe about this? 10?

That wasn't even a strike.

It seems like the ebbs and flows of the season have balanced out and we're right back where we expected to be at the start of the season. They were on 95-100 win pace for a while...did anyone ever think this team would win 100 or even 95 games?

It was a shocker to see the final score today after watching briefly in the 6th-7th. We've been spoiled by our bullpen this year and the past week is concerning. Hopefully we just ran into the Padres at the wrong time.

It's not like they blew some sort of insurmountable lead. The Padres still had a 15% chance of winning after the Moustakas HR. About the same chance of winning the Brewers have now.

Are we losing?

That is an interesting point in regards to relocation or expansion for any teams in MLB. There are plenty of places that should have the population numbers and corporate dollars to support a major league team but is there actually any interest by the people who would attend games? Baseball is not a sport on the rise. The areas with the biggest "serious" youth participation have got to be Florida, Arizona, and southern California. Baseball has already failed in Florida for two teams. I don't think the DBacks are a failure but they don't seem to have a great fan base. And southern California has enough teams already. I keep reading that the people of Montreal are dying for baseball. Maybe that's true but they already gave up on one team. It doesn't really matter to me that the Expos and Olympic Stadium sucked, they gave up. Who's to say that won't happen again if they get the Rays and have to spend most years in 3rd place or get an expansion team and suck for 5 years. Baseball is not dying, it is extremely popular and is doing fine at retaining fans and TV viewership relative to other sports. Essentially all of MLB's current problem franchises are due to ownership or stadium or both. The Oakland A's are very popular despite their poor attendance. Tampa Bay does better on TV than attendance would suggest. Miami has a long history of bad ownership...baseball is incredibly popular in Miami as seen by WBC attendance, U of M baseball attendance, etc. There are tons of MLB fans in Miami. Arizona has never drawn less than 2 million fans in a season...the Brewers have drawn under 2 million five times since 1998. I couldn't disagree more about the Expos, they are a huge opportunity to expand. Baseball is incredibly popular in Canada. One of the Jays' ALCS games was watched in part by 1 in 3 Canadians. Seattle gets overrun by visiting Jays fans who live in Vancouver BC nearly as much as Milwaukee does during Cubs series. Montreal did not give up on MLB, MLB gave up on Montreal--first in '94 and then in the declining years when they didn't even bother to have a local TV contract. Adding Montreal would be a huge hit for more than the nostalgia factor. It would be a big vote of confidence for Canadian baseball. It will happen sooner or later. Anyway, interesting aside, the Mariners are threatening to not sign a new lease at Safeco Field unless the county agrees to pay $180 million in upgrades to the stadium. Currently it looks like they will not get anywhere near that figure and public sentiment is strongly opposed. So it will be interesting to see how that plays out. They will probably have to get by with a much smaller public handout than they might have gotten a few years ago before the public started getting suspicious of these deals.

Wow!!!

This is an advantage for a team with bullpen strength. It lessens the chance of facing Kershaw or Greinke in the WC game.

That's too bad, they almost stole this one. Sigh.

Reyes managed to make some pointless history today--he is the first player ever to hit multiple home runs the day after giving up multiple home runs.

I changed the title to Nationals. It sounded like Jose Reyes isn't very good at pitching.

Middle infield woahs solvdd.

Add me to the list of those who agree with you. It goes the other way too--it may have helped the Brewers avoid a similar blunder.

It sounded like the opposite to me...the front office started trying to sell and ownership vetoed it. Either way it was an error that may prove to be costly.