Friday, May 1, 2009

Don't look now...

but the Brewers are in second in the NL central and have won 8 of their last 10. If the playoffs started tomorrow, we'd be tied with the Phillies for the wild card! I know, it's way too early to be saying stuff like that, but after the rocky start, it's nice to look at the standings and smile. And Suppan went 6.1 innings allowing 6 hits, 1 solo dinger and no walks. He even struck out three! That's like... pretty okay-ish. The real key to this win though was the offense. I know, they didn't score much until late in the game. But what they did do, is have quality at bats and drive up a young pitcher's pitch count and get him out of the game. It's great to see.

6 comments:

tracker said...

Among the pleasant surprises so far are:

Hall's 352 obp vs rhp

Hart with nearly half as many walks (13) in 96 PAs as he did last year (27) in 657 PAs.

DeFelice's 0.943 whip and 0.77 ERA.

Cameron crushing rhp


Among the concerns:

Hardy. For a while I thought he was hitting unlucky, but has he hit a ball hard lately?Historically, such stretches have coincided with shoulder fatigue or injury with him.

Weeks with only 4 walks. He's certainly hitting well though and still has a .340 obp. Is his game changed for good? If so, does he help this team more lower in the lineup?

Pen depth.

Lh bench bat. Nelson's oh-fer-ever and Gamel's 1.260 in Nashville are hard to ignore.

Catcher. Haudricourt speculates that the Brewers will re-sign Kendall. Wow.

Anonymous said...

And the Cubs got blown apart in the 9th last night. They took a 2-2 tie into the top of the 9th and allowed like 6 more runs. Ha ha.

ahren said...

agreed that hardy looks terrible, though he has also been unlucky. just yesterday, he smashed that ball in the hole that josh wilson made a great play on...

re: weeks and his bb's. bp's marc normandin had a blurb on him a few days ago. apparently he's seeing a much higher percentage of first pitch strikes than in years past. i think he's adjusted recently, jumping on more of these (just anecdotal observation on my part), and having some success doing so. this could account for some of his lack of walks.

PaulNoonan said...

Yeah, it looks like Hardy's been both unlucky and bad. He's hitting line drives only 12% of the time (also disturbing, his LD% has declined every year he has been in the bigs) but his BABIP is still low at .161.

Anonymous said...

Cubs are down 5-2 right now

PaulNoonan said...

Frickin Ryan Theriot.