W: Zack Greinke (1-1)
L: Mat Latos (0-5)
S: John Axford (6)
HR: Rickie Weeks (7)
MVP: Zack Greinke (+.152 pitching, +.020 hitting for +.172 total)
LVP: Yuniesky Betancourt (-.098)
Win Expectancy Graph and Star of the Game Voting
This Brewer team is going to be in trouble if they can't find a way to win on the road, but at least they're still pretty good at home.
Zack Greinke looked much more like Zack Greinke tonight. He needed just 89 pitches to get through six innings, allowing two runs on five hits with no walks and nine strikeouts. He also picked up his first Brewer hit, pulling back a bunt and slapping an infield single. Despite missing a month at the start of the season, Greinke now has 15 games with nine strikeouts or more since the start of the 2009 season: That's tied for the seventh most in all of baseball.
Meanwhile, the Brewers scored a run in the first when Carlos Gomez tripled and scored on Mat Latos' wild pitch, another in the second on a Rickie Weeks single, a third on Weeks' seventh home run of the season, and a fourth on back-to-back doubles for Corey Hart and Jonathan Lucroy. With the exception of Yuniesky Betancourt, every Brewer starter reached base safely in the game: Ryan Braun and Casey McGehee were held hitless but each drew a walk.
Here's something we don't say often: Betancourt made up for a rough night at the plate with a couple of nice defensive plays. He started a double play in the eighth with a flashy behind-the-back flip to Rickie Weeks on a ball up the middle, and was able to recover and record an out when Rickie Weeks nearly threw the ball away on a double play chance in the ninth.
Corey Hart's double in the sixth was his first extra base hit of 2011.