Braun’s Walk-Off, puts magic number at 8

Last night’s game was not pretty.  Greinke labored through 5 innings, while only giving up 1 run.  The offense looked worse than a 5 year old’s t-ball team.  And yet, this may be the game that we look back on and say “That was when the team caught fire again and cruised to the World Series.”  Now, that is wishful thinking, but it is certainly not out of the realm of possibilities.  Ryan Braun’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th inning was a thing of beauty.

On Monday I talked about the bullpen and all of the question marks we have out there.  Last night we saw Hawkins, Saito, K-Rod, Axford, and Kam Loe.  The bullpen threw 6 innings of shutout baseball.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Greinke is the concerning part of yesterday.  It took Zack-a-Shaq 116 pitches to get through 5 innings.  While he struck out 9 batters, it still makes you wonder why he can’t seem to work through an inning without throwing 30 pitches.  While he did not get the win, his ERA continues to drop towards the 3.50 range for the season.

Yuniesky Betancourt is so bad… (how bad is he)  Yuniesky Betancourt is so bad that Ron Roenicke won’t take him out of the lineup.  Sorry, that was not so much a joke, as it is a terrifying fact.  Betancourt is horrible right now.  In fact he has been horrible all season long.  If it wasn’t for his out of control tear in August, his batting average would be in the .190’s.  Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says this quite a bit and it is a fact, “I have never seen a player so eager to make an out”.  Yuni just can’t help himself.  If the ball is thrown towards him, like it is every single at-bat, he is going to swing at it every time.  I said it on Monday and I will say it again now.  Sit Betancourt down for a few games between now and October.  Maybe JHJ or Taylor Green will give the team a little extra punch in the back of the order.  At this point I can’t believe the RRR and company have not given this a shot.

This team lives and dies by Prince and Brauny.  We all know this, but last night was the clearest picture you can have.  Solo-home runs from each of them accounted for the only runs of the game.  The rest of the team needs to start getting involved.  September the 5th was the last time the Brewers scored more than 3 runs in a ballgame, they scored 4 runs that day.  My hope is that Brauns home run will jump start the team’s dead battery offense.

A special congratulations to LaTroy Hawkins, he is a nominee for this years Roberto Clemente Award.  This award is given tannually to a player who best represents the game of baseball through sportsmanship, community involvement and positive contributions to their clubs.  You can vote for LaTroy here.  Voters will also be registered for a trip for four to the 2011 World Series, so help out our boy and maybe win a trip to the World Series.

Tonight Marcum takes the hill, looking for the oh so sweet 2 game sweep.  Go Brewers!!!