The Brewers play the Cubs this afternoon in what's a getaway game for the Cubs. The Brewers are staying. Both teams may have significantly altered rosters by game time; Eric Farris is coming up from Nashville to replace Rickie Weeks and the Cubs are very much rumored to be closing a deal to ship right fielder Kosuke Fukudome to Cleveland.
Randy Wells (6.17 ERA, 5.23 FIP) is one of those guys, to me, that I instantly forget about his existence as soon as the game is over. It's weird; I know perfectly well he's been with the Cubs since 2008 abut my memory of him only goes back to today. The Brewers have seen Wells already in 2011 back on June 14 where he gave up 8 hits and walked 3 in 6 innings. Here in 2011 he's giving about 6 innings of meh baseball in every start. His best starts of this year were his first one and last one in terms of not giving up runs. On the other hand, runs are not the story for Wells and his FIP and 1.68 WHIP are more of the indication here. Wells should be sort of interesting to watch for another feature: his primary pitch is a slider. His average velocity on his fastball is around 87 mph.
Shaun Marcum (3.35 ERA, 3.65 FIP) has never faced the Cubs before! This should be fun! Even better, the only two Cubs he's ever faced in the AL were Carlos Pena and Marlon Byrd; despite playing in the same division as the Rays, he's only faced Pena 14 times. I've also just noticed that Marcum has a career BABIP of .268, and he's been in the majors for parts of 6 seasons. That is interesting!
Brewers lineup:
Corey Hart RF
Nyjer Morgan CF
Ryan Braun LF
Prince Fielder 1B
Casey McGehee 3B
Yuniesky Betancourt SS
Jonathan Lucroy C
Craig Counsell 2B
Shaun Marcum P
Bullpen use:
John Axford pitched 1 inning (12 pitches) last night and 1 inning (19 pitches) Tuesday.
Francisco Rodriguez pitched 1 inning (12 pitches) last night and 1 inning (11 pitches) Tuesday.
Takashi Saito pitched 0.1 inning (2 pitches) last night.
LaTroy Hawkins pitched 1 inning (16 pitches) Tuesday.
Kameron Loe pitched 1 inning (6 pitches) Tuesday.
Marco Estrada pitched 0.2 inning (3 pitches) Saturday.
Tim Dillard? Does he even go here?