W: Ryan Dempster (9-8)
L: Manny Parra (3-9)
HR: Tyler Colvin (17), Aramis Ramirez (16), Geovany Soto (15), Blake DeWitt (2)
MVP: Corey Hart (+.194)
LVP: Who do you think? (-.332)
Meltdown Expectancy Graph and Star of the Game Voting
SB Nation Coverage
If you've seen Manny Parra pitch, you've probably seen this before.
Parra was cruising along through five innings today, allowing a solo home run to Tyler Colvin but little else until suddenly and violently losing it in the sixth, allowing five runs to cross the plate and dropping the Brewer chances of winning this game from 68 percent to six.
The game turned on a two-out, hanging 0-2 slider (thanks sjlee) to Blake DeWitt, which he served into left field to tie the game at 3. After allowing another single to Jeff Baker to give the Cubs the lead Parra was pulled in favor of Todd Coffey, who allowed the home run to Aramis Ramirez that removed all doubt. Parra, Coffey, LaTroy Hawkins, David Riske and Chris Capuano combined to allow fourteen unanswered runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.
With six earned runs allowed today in 5.2 innings, Parra raised his ERA to 5.67 on the season and 8.29 over his last seven starts. He's quickly closing in on numbers as bad as last year's.
Just like after all of Parra's other rough performances, someone is certain to pop up in the comments or on another site to stress patience and remind us that Jorge de la Rosa had a decent season once after five terrible major league seasons. If you're one of those people, congratulations on keeping the faith. I'm definitely not with you, though. At this point, I see any future starts given to Parra as a mistake.
Also, after Cub pitchers hit Brewers with pitches 13 times this season, LaTroy Hawkins grazed Alfonso Soriano's jersey with a fastball in the seventh (the second time a Brewer has hit a Cub) and both he and Ken Macha were ejected, despite the fact that no warnings had been issued and none of the Cubs who hit Brewers in the series were tossed. The state of umpiring in Major League Baseball is a terrible joke.