Milwaukee Brewers: Season Series Vs. The Washington Nationals

The Milwaukee Brewers have played the Washington Nationals six times this season.  Let’s see how the Brewers fared in those six contests.

First Series

Early in May, the Milwaukee Brewers played a three game series in Miller Park and swept the series. The Brewers faced Wild Card game starter Max Scherzer in the series opener and scored two runs, but only one earned in six strong innings.

In addition to only giving up one earned run, Scherzer struck out 10. The Brewers then went on to win the next two games pretty handily and in game two, they tagged Stephen Strasburg, who is likely to pitch in relief in the Wild Card game, for four earned runs in six innings. Strasburg did strike out 10 Brewers in that game.

The Brewers pitching staff only surrendered six runs the three games, highlighted by a six inning, one earned run start and win by Brandon Woodruff in game three as well as five strong bullpen innings by Freddy Peralta in game two.  On the offensive side, Orlando Arcia led the team with six hits in the series.

Second Series

The Brewers played their second series against the Nationals in mid-August and this time, the Nationals beat the Brewers two out of three games.  The Brewers pitching staff fell apart in this series giving up 32 runs in three games.  30 of the 32 runs came in games two and three. The Brewers were no slouch on the offensive end though, scoring 24 earned runs in the series, including 15 runs in a wild game two victory in extra innings.

Jordan Lyles, Freddy Peralta, and Chase Anderson each had bad games in the series.  The worst of those was Anderson who gave up 10 earned runs in 2.1 innings.  The Brewers did not face Scherzer or Strasburg in that series.  Mike Moustakas was the hottest hitter, hitting .438 with eight RBI’s.

In the two series combined, the Brewers won four of six games and scored 42 runs compared to 38 from the Nationals.

Conclusion

Based on a small sample size, it looks like the Milwaukee Brewers will have their hands full with Scherzer but if they can get past him with the game still in reach, they have a chance against Strasburg and the Nationals bullpen.

On the flip side, the small sample size also showed that Brandon Woodruff has had success against the Nationals, so if the Brewers can get a few solid innings out of him, this could be a very competitive game.

How both teams handle their pitching staffs in the Wild Card game will be very different than how they handled them in the regular season meetings.