Series Six Pack: Brewers face Champion Giants

The series against the St. Louis Cardinals didn’t exactly go as the Milwaukee Brewers (3-8) wanted it to. The team is coming off of a series loss against St. Louis and heads home to Miller Park. The San Francisco Giants (9-4) are coming off of a four game series against the Chicago Cubs. The Giants won three out of four of the games.

Let’s get into it.

San Francisco Giants

The San Francisco Giants have really become of the better teams in baseball. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

The Giants are a team proud to say that they’ve won two out of the last three World Series, and why shouldn’t they be proud? This is a team that has had everything clicking for awhile and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be much of a threat in the National League West division to stop them. Pitching has been the absolute name of the game in the Bay Area and Matt Cain helps leads a strong staff. Aside from his perfect game last year, Cain still remains as one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball. Madison Bumgarner and Ryan Vogelsong have also contributed in big ways to the rotation. Perhaps the two biggest shocks are how well Barry Zito has pitched and how poorly two-time Cy Young Award Winner Tim Lincecum has performed on the mound. Sergio Romo has also been lights out the closer. You can’t predict baseball folks.

For the Giants offensively, Angel Pagan, Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval have been the three biggest parts of the line-up. 2012 NL MVP Buster Posey has been off to a cold start, only hitting .231 with five RBIs and eight strike outs, but will bounce back soon. Brandon Crawford and Marco Scutaro will look to not only be solid in the infield, but with the bats again as well.

Milwaukee Brewers

The Milwaukee Brewers need some serious wins in the coming games. Mandatory Credit: Scott Rovak-USA TODAY Sports

Perhaps the best way to describe the Brewers right now is that of stumbling out of the gate. This is a team that despite making a dash for the playoffs last season, looks absolutely lost out on the field sometimes. Heading into Sunday’s win against the Cardinals, the Brewers had been scoreless for 25 straight innings and didn’t even score until the 8th inning in that win. The pitching has been decent overall as efforts from Marco Estrada and Kyle Lohse have kept the sanity of many fans. The bullpen aside from the struggling but rebounding John Axford has been solid.

One of the biggest flaws with the Brewers at the moment has been the offense. It’s not even necessarily the injuries that are hurting the team at this point that it is just the lack of hitting. In Friday’s loss, the team was limited to two hits and in Saturday’s loss, four hits. Jean Segura has been on an absolute tear for the Brew Crew, hitting .417 with one home run and three RBIs. The one thing that sounds out about Segura so far is his OPS (on-base plus slugging) of 1.073  Norichika Aoki has also been extremely active with the lumber as has Ryan Braun. The rest of the team remains pretty cold, but hey, it’s only the third week of baseball. Don’t expect the Brewers to slump for the entire season.

The Match-Ups:

San Francisco’s pitchers will be listed first followed by Milwaukee’s:

Tonight: Barry Zito (2-0, 0.00 ERA) vs Wily Peralta (0-1, 4.50) at 8:10 p.m. ET / 7:10 p.m. CT

Wednesday: Ryan Vogelsong (1-1, 7.15 ERA) vs Mike Fiers (0-1, 9.00 ERA) at 8:10 p.m. ET / 7:10 p.m. CT

Thursday: Matt Cain (0-1, 5.94 ERA) vs Kyle Lohse (0-1, 2.08 ERA) at 1:10 p.m. ET / 12:10 p.m. CT