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Fermented Game Review, July 15

Top of the first, bloop, blip, blop; singles by Jonathan Villar, Ryan Braun, and Jonathan Lucroy scored Our Favorite Team a run, reminding me of the Ruben Quevedo (R.I.P.) era. 1-0. Anthony DeSclafani, looking mean and bitter, injured too long, too good for all this, pretending he’s not really a Red, was looking vulnerable. I still felt good when Chris Carter hit the ball hard, but was out in right field, a couple hundred meters short of the river and the cows. Sweet optimism! All the first five batters are good! Villar, Scooter Gennett, Braun, Lucroy, Carter… but then… Kirk Niewenhuis stepped to the plate and struck out looking. "He’s not very good," I told my wife.

The inning was crisped, and though we didn’t know it, Ol’ Desclaf’ was two betters into a string of ten outs in a row. The Brewers are fun this year—like any baseball geek, I’m happy to posit unreasonable fantasies on Jake Elmore’s minor league OBP—as every day those first five slots in the order you think, hey, pretty darn good lineup here! And then you see Niewenhuis, Middlebrooks, and Flores, or Broxton, Maldonado, and Perez, or whoever, and you remember "oh yeah," and gird your naked fandom with faith alone once more, and hope even just one of them will have a Casey McGehee type year or two. Or something.

Over to Matt Garza for the bottom of the first. Still looking like the jocky guy who joined the drama club to get the girls and got the lead role you thought you deserved. Climbing up the humid dirt mound in this wedding-cake-like park, wedding cake mixed with an aspirational picket fence. Trying to show somebody else—you and I know too much already—that he’s not terrible. And when the inning closed with Joey Votto grounding into a double play after just ten Garza pitches, well, hope springs attorney, to quote Bob Uecker.

We settled into a pitcher’s duel, or so the mirage read in the dusky heat. The next batter to get on for either team was DeSclafani in the bottom of the third. It still felt like a pitcher’s duel when Cincinnati evened the score on a Billy-Hamilton-as-he-should-have-been play in the fourth, zinging home from second base while Middlebrooks and Scooter Gennett were unsuccessfully trying to turn a double play involving other players in the middle infield. Billy Hamilton as Independent Force, 1-1.

The Brewers then began to build something, sandwiching lone runs in the 5th and 6th around a Garza one-two-three-um (just think, one or two starts like this at this time of year could be worth a whole ‘nother prospect!). Yep; get anything on in front of that top five (thank you, Ramon Flores!) and you feel bound to score some runs. Villar singled Flores home in the 4th. 2-1. Gennett got all Mark Bellhorn on us and hit a home run in the 6th. Trade this guy quick! 3-1.

But the minor but sufficient disaster of the sixth inning keyed this game. Even though Garza followed an out with three straight baserunners, capped by a run-scoring double (3-2) by Adam Duvall that ploomped off the soft yellow wall top like a baby falling into a bean-bag chair, I was puzzled to see Garza yanked, on just 81 pitches, after five and a third not-bad innings. Leave him in for two more outs, earn another half a prospect? Or were they thinking, "if we pull him now and a reliever preserves his ERA a bit, we get another prospect?" Ancient-sailor-of-the-replacement-player-seas Carlos Torres—a strange choice for this leverage inning; perhaps an earn-a-lottery-ticket-trade-audition himself?—at first made the strategizing look good with a breezing of Brandon Phillips, but in the end he is Carlos Torres, and Tucker Barnhart brought both runners home with a weak little dink shot over third base that bounced off the side wall, colloquially known as a double. Sigh. 3-4.

I remember with wicked delight early in the season savoring the advent of the likes of Caleb Cotham: Reds bullpen, guaranteed runs for the other team! So I tried to gloat when Raisel Iglesias was brought in. But my rational self kept reminding me, this guy is pretty good, should probably be a starter on this staff, was probably put in the bullpen to stop the gory splatter of the early months. And it did, as the Brewers got their foot on the plump white dirt sacks in both the 7th and 8th, but scored runs in neither, and gave up a run in the half inning in between as they continued with their losing-game-relievers, Blain Boyer falling victim to a Billy-Hamilton-as-he-should-have-been bunt single and a Jay-Bruce-as-he-always-has-been-against-the-Brewers (*&$!%!*!!) run scoring double. 3-5.

Well, it’s still the Reds bullpen! And fear not, Tony Cingrani, who has blown five of fifteen save chances and is only the closer because he’s not really terrible, came in, and did I mention that if you get hitters on in front of the first five hitters in the Brewers’ order, runs flow in silver fountains? A drop dribbled out of the silver fountain after (dream on) Jake Elmore, (dream died long ago) Will Middlebrooks, and (stop fooling Brewers management with those early season small sample sizes, darn it!) Hernan Perez all got on base with nobody out. The Perez bit made it 4-5, and a win looked inevitable, as we’d just gotten three guys in the bottom of the order on and were almost to that dreamy top five.

We’re going to win! Yay! It seemed very obvious. No, we’re going to sacrifice bunt! Crap!

The bunt failed. Oh, yes, Yadiel Rivera advanced the runners, but he was out. Free out against Cincinnati bullpen = failure. I will go that far with the New School for you. Then Gennett had to face a lefty, and suddenly Bryan Price looked like half-a-genius, or at least a decently skilled manager, as he’d tricked us into bases loaded but two outs, instead of some blow-out Brewers dominant comeback at like 8-4.

Of course, Ryan Braun against Ross Ohlendorf (who once entertained his Nationals teammates by modeling his pitching style on Walter Johnson during a real game, and I’ve had a soft spot for him ever since) with the bases loaded sounds very good. It would have sounded better with one out. Time to drag out all your hoary clichés—so true, so true!—about how if you fail two out of three times as a batter you’re still a big star, as Brauny fell victim to Truth and popped out to Zach Cosart, ending this hopeful and fun one in drear faint resentment, Final Score 4-5.

Over the outfield wall, a hot and soupy river poured slowly by, a decorational paddleboat steamship ploughed about on the brown surface, brown cows were placid in the damp green fields in the dark beyond. Get ‘em tomorrow, Brewers.