Can the Brewers avoid falling back to ten games under .500?
Current Series
Giants lead the series 1-0
| Mon 07/05 | WP: Jonathan Sanchez (7 - 6) LP: Kameron Loe (0 - 1) | 1 - 6 loss |
San Francisco Giants Tuesday, Jul 6, 2010, 7:10 PM CDT Madison Bumgarner vs Randy Wolf Partly cloudy,rain. Winds blowing right to left field at 5-10 m.p.h. Game time temperature around 85. Complete Coverage > | ||
| Wed 07/07 | 7:10 PM CDT | |
| Thu 07/08 | 1:10 PM CDT | |
Follow the jump for tonight's pitching matchup, lineup and more!
Randy Wolf (4.70 ERA, 5.95 FIP) still doesn't have very good numbers on the season but he's been better lately, posting a quality start in three of his last four appearances. The Brewers won all three of those games to improve to 8-9 in his starts this season. He only needed 94 pitches to complete 6.1 innings of work against the Cardinals on Thursday, allowing a run on four hits, striking out four and walking just one.
Wolf has made nine starts on the road and posted a 4.23 ERA. At home, he has a 5.25 ERA in eight starts. Four Giants have faced him at least ten times:
| Player | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS |
| Edgar Renteria | 38 | .294 | .368 | .412 | .780 |
| Aaron Rowand | 21 | .200 | .238 | .400 | .638 |
| Freddy Sanchez | 13 | .231 | .231 | .308 | .538 |
| Juan Uribe | 12 | .273 | .333 | .273 | .606 |
He'll face Madison Bumgarner (4.50 ERA, 4.93 FIP), making his fourth major league start (third in 2010). He won't turn 21 until August and is the top pitching prospect in the Giants' organization. He's lasted seven innings in each of his two starts this season, allowing four earned runs on five hits to the Red Sox on June 26 and three earned runs on nine hits to the Rockies on Thursday. He struck out five and walked one in each game. Also, his middle initial is K.
The Brewers haven't faced Bumgarner before, so instead of telling you no one has faced him ten times, I'll give you an excerpt from his scouting report in John Sickels' 2010 Prospect Book:
Scouts give his curveball and changeup mediocre ratings. He gets people out because of sharp command and a deceptive delivery that plays up his stuff even when the radar gun isn't impressed, but there's some concern about how long that would remain true once major league hitters get a good look at him.
...
All things considered, Bumgarner is still one of the best pitching prospects in the game, but it is unclear to me if he'll become a number one ace-type starter, or more of a number three/four inning eater. Either way I think he needs a good dose of Triple-A to polish up his breaking stuff. It will be interesting to see how quickly the Giants push him. Grade: A-
Via Adam McCalvy, we know that Craig Counsell is in for Alcides Escobar tonight and George Kottaras is still catching Randy Wolf:
Rickie Weeks 2B
Corey Hart RF
Prince Fielder 1B
Ryan Braun LF
Casey McGehee 3B
Craig Counsell SS
Carlos Gomez CF
George Kottaras C
Randy Wolf P
And in the bullpen:
Zach Braddock pitched .2 innings (17 pitches) yesterday, and also pitched Sunday.
Kameron Loe pitched .1 inning (17 pitches) yesterday and also pitched Sunday.
David Riske pitched 1 inning (15 pitches) yesterday.
Chris Capuano pitched 1 inning (19 pitches) yesterday.
Carlos Villanueva pitched 3.1 innings (38 pitches) Sunday.
Todd Coffey pitched 1.1 innings (10 pitches) Saturday.
Trevor Hoffman pitched 1 inning (19 pitches) Friday.
John Axford pitched 1 inning (14 pitches) Thursday.
Enjoy the game!