So much for .500. Chris Capuano didn't get his 13th win, the Brewers didn't get their 56th and pick up a game on Houston, and ... well, it was just sad.
Again, in many ways, the Brewers were victims of the base-on-balls. Cappy gave up four of them in five innings, which is at least two, probably three more than he should expect to get away with. At this point, I'm not even so concerned with the home runs--though I'm a little concerned that the dingers were Pratt and Rollins--because presumably those pitches were strikes. But just as it was in the Mets series, Brewers pitchers aren't hitting their spots, are constantly pitching behind in the count, and seeing the damage that results.
I don't think it's fair to be too distressed with the offense. True--I expected more about Jon Lieber, but Jon is a good pitcher who has had a mediocre year, the type of guy who fills out the middle of just about every MLB staff. On any given day, he could come out and give up 8 runs in the first 3 innings--or he could shut you down. Unfortunately the Brewer bats were tapped out after the NY series and some late-inning magic last night, so we got the latter from Lieber. Now we're back where we were before: looking up to .500.
Here's the pretty-darn-boring win probability graph for the game:
I tried to make it a little more pleasant for y'all. I'll be seeing Dukes of Hazzard on Monday night, so I've got Jessica on the brain. (Yeah, it's just because of the movie. Of course.)
Here are the Brewers (disgusting) win-probability stats for the night:
- "Batting"
- Clark, -5.3%
- Weeks -4.5%
- Overbay, +0.3%
- Lee, -8.0%
- Jenkins, -1.0%
- Miller, +5.6% (MVP, three nights running!)
- Branyan, +2.9% (HRs aren't worth much when they change your deficit from 6 to 5.)
- Hardy, -7.6% (plus another negative percent for the error)
- Capuano, -6.0%
- Lehr, -0.3%
- Durrington, -0.3%
- Helms, +0.0% (with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, down 6 runs, it really doesn't matter what you do.)
Pitching: - Capuano, -16.4% (and minus another 1.3% for his error)
- Helling, -8.6% (would be much worse, but the game was pretty much lost when he came in.)
- Lehr, +1.6%
So only Miller, Branyan and Lehr contributed more than 1%. Lehr, of course, did quite the job for his team--he got out of a tremendous jam in the 6th, and saved the bullpen for another night when it would matter. I rag on Ned Yost a lot for shoddy bullpen usage, but with Justin Lehr, a guy who has been starting in the minors, he made the right decision by letting him go the full three innings. Now Wise, Turnbow, Santana, Eveland, and de la Rosa will all be rested for tomorrow afternoon's game and beyond. Which is all the more important after the bullpen-draining disaster that was the Mets series.
The Phillies were, predictably, the opposite of the Brewers in win probability added: only Abreu and Bell had negative contributions, and Lieber was good for +21.1% from the mound.
So...how 'bout that game tomorrow? I may take a while to get the recap up tomorrow, as I'm headed down to Philly to see the game, and if I make it back to New York in time, I may check out the Mets-Cubs game, as well. Baseball overload, here we come!