The Brewers have to figure out how to win on the road and/or beat the Reds eventually, right?
They'll get a shot tonight against Travis Wood (5.11 ERA, 3.64 FIP), who is having a pretty good month of May. In five starts he's thrown 30 innings and posted a 3.30 ERA. He has four quality starts in the month and one of them was on Wednesday, when he held the Phillies to three runs on six hits over six innings.
Wood throws a little bit of everything. He's got a ~90 mph fastball but also throws a cutter, change, slider and curve. The changeup is very good - the rest of his pitches are either below average (fastball, cutter and curve) or used too infrequently to give credibility to the sample size (slider).
Wood beat the Brewers on April 2, holding them to just one run on four hits over seven innings, with no walks and seven strikeouts. Erick Almonte homered off of him in that game. No current Brewers have faced him ten times or more, but Rickie Weeks is 1-for-8 with a homer and a HBP in nine games.
He'll face Chris Narveson (4.20 ERA, 3.16 FIP), looking to rebound from a poor start against the Nationals on Wednesday. Narveson allowed six runs on eight hits while lasting just 3.1 innings in the game, walking two and striking out three. He had a 2.49 ERA in the four starts before that.
It's possible multiples of five are Narveson's problem. He was very good in his first four starts before getting crushed by the Reds on April 25, then very good again for four more starts before getting beaten up by the Nationals. If this is actually his problem, we should probably all avoid his 15th start.
As I mentioned above, the Reds lit Narveson up in his only appearance against them this season. On April 25 they scored seven runs on eight hits against him in just 2.1 innings. Joey Votto is the only current Red that's faced Narveson ten times or more: He's hitting .556/.600/1.000 with a double and a home run.
Via Adam McCalvy, here's tonight's lineup:
Rickie Weeks 2B
Corey Hart RF
Ryan Braun LF
Prince Fielder 1B
Casey McGehee 3B
Jonathan Lucroy C
Yuniesky Betancourt SS
Carlos Gomez CF
Chris Narveson P
And in the bullpen:
Latroy Hawkins pitched 1 inning (16 pitches) yesterday.
Kameron Loe pitched 0.2 innings (12 pitches) Saturday.
John Axford pitched 1 inning (16 pitches) Saturday.
Mike McClendon and Marco Estrada haven't pitched since Friday.
Sergio Mitre last pitched on Tuesday.
Tim Dillard might not even have been on the team plane.
Weather:
It's hot in Cincinnati today, and will likely remain so throughout the game. First pitch temps will be around 88, dropping down into the high 70's by midnight. No precipitation is expected.