Brewer Daily News for March 21st: Maldonado Returns, Brewers tie Giants

Good morning and welcome again to another edition of Brewer Daily News. This Thursday morning, the Milwaukee Brewers now have back-up catcher Martin Maldonado with the team after Team Puerto Rico’s run to the World Baseball Classic championship. In the second bit of news today, the Brewers played the San Francisco Giants yesterday and ended up tying the 2012 World Series champs.

Martin Maldonado will look to expand upon his great 2012 this season. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

With Maldonado’s return to the Brewers, the team can now focus on their 25-man roster, which he will be a big part of. Last season, Maldonado stepped in as a starter during Jonathan Lucroy‘s time on the disabled list. During that time, Maldonado impressed a lot of fans and ended up with a .266/.321/.408 slash line with eight homers, 30 RBIs and he scored 22 runs for the season.

During his time with the Puerto Rican team in the past few weeks, Maldonado had this to say:

"“It was one of the best experiences as a ballplayer you can have. It was way different than the big leagues. You can have fun more, if somebody goes out there and scores a run, you go out there and [celebrate]. It was unbelievable.” – via Brewers.com"

Maldonado didn’t put up the greatest numbers at the WBC as he didn’t get one hit in nine at-bats and struck out seven times. Regardless, Maldonado had fun representing not only the Brewers, but his country as well. We’ll look for him to be hopefully just as strong this year as he was last year.

Yesterday afternoon, the Brewers and Giants tied at 0-0 and even went an extra 10th inning to try and break the scoreless duel. In the game, Chris Narveson looked brilliant for the Brewers. Narveson went six innings, giving up only one hit and struck out four. John Axford, Brandon Kintzler, Michael Olmsted and Josh Stinson also pitched for the Brew Crew and combined gave up four hits, two walks and struck out two. Ryan Vogelsong started for the Giants and went six innings, giving up three hits, one walk and struck out seven.

Maldonado got a hit in his return back and the newly extended Carlos Gomez also got a hit. Both teams were limited to five hits overall and the Giants committed one error.

This afternoon the Brewers will take on the Chicago White Sox at 4:05 p.m. EST / 3:05 p.m. CST. The starters will be Mike Fiers for Milwaukee and Chris Sale for Chicago.