W: Sean White (1-0)
L: David Johnson (0-1)
S: Casey Weathers (1)
HR: Ryan Braun (2)
There are moments each winter where many of us would do anything for baseball - any baseball. If you're like me, though, you quickly forget those moments when the final innings of a four hour, extra inning spring training loss begin to drag out. There were occasional exciting moments today but they were a little too few and far between as the Brewers fell to the Rockies in ten innings.
Statistics would suggest that Luis Cruz, (.275 career OBP) and Carlos Gomez (.293 OBP) won't get on base at the same time very often. Yet somehow today they both got on in front of Ryan Braun, who drove them home with a three run shot to give the Brewers an early 3-1 lead. That was good enough for a while as Chris Narveson was pretty good today, allowing a run on four hits over 3.2 innings, the longest outing by a Brewer starter this spring. He walked just one and struck out two.
Unfortunately, John Axford was not good today. He faced five batters and allowed four to reach on two walks and two hits in the fifth, tying the game. And from there, the defense continued to let the Brewers down even further: Yuniesky Betancourt's second error in the game and a poor throw by Prince Fielder on a fielder's choice allowed the go-ahead run and one more to score in the sixth.
The two teams went back and forth over the next three innings: the Brewers got hits from Luis Cruz, Erick Almonte and Eric Farris to tie the game in the seventh, but Cody Scarpetta allowed a run in the top of the ninth. The Brewers scored a single run to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth, but missed the opportunity to put the game away.
Other notables:
- Luis Cruz pinch ran for Rickie Weeks in the third inning, which seemed a little early. As mentioned above, Cruz was driven in by Braun's home run.
- Braun's home run was the Brewers' only extra base hit in the game.
- Betancourt's errors were his second and third of the spring. Jeremy Reed also made an error in the outfield in the tenth.
- In a potentially related note, Eric Farris finished the game with a couple of innings at shortstop again today.
- Wily Taveras ran wild on the Brewers today, stealing three bases. Two of them were off Wil Nieves, and one was off George Kottaras. Brewer catchers went 0-for-6 throwing out basestealers in the game.
- Chris Dickerson played the whole game today in right and went 3-for-5 with an RBI.
- Former Brewer Hernan Iribarren played the entire game at shortstop for the Rockies, going 1-for-6 and driving in the game winning run with a sac fly.