Today's Game: Brewers (Peralta) at Reds (Latos)

(As usual on days where the day game is so soon after the night game, the Frosty Mug will not appear today, and will return on Friday morning.)

The Brewers complete their final series against the Reds today and will be having to face Mat Latos (3.60 ERA, 3.89 FIP.) Ben Duronio at Fangraphs covered the changes in Latos's pitch mix since June (so I don't have to.) In any case, the guy the Brewers have seen in both their matchups against him in 2012 has been the post-June Good Latos; the first time he faced them this season he pitched a complete game with 4 hits and 13 strikeouts. Latos has only faced the Brewers 4 times, twice with the Reds and twice with the Padres, so they don't have a large sample against him. Even with that small set of data, it includes the two home runs Rickie Weeks has hit against him. Every position player in today's lineup has faced Latos before, however.

Wily Peralta (3.04 ERA, 2.94 FIP) is facing the Reds for the first time in his career as he comes off his shortest MLB start of the season, in which it took him 73 pitches to get through 2.2 innings. It wasn't the 5 hits and 3 runs in those innings that got him. It was the 4 walks, a return to the troubles that plagued him with Nashville early in the 2012 season. (Peralta had only 2 shorter starts as a Sound: 1 against Round Rock on 5/27 in which he gave up 9 hits and 2 home runs in 1.2 IP, and one against Oklahoma City where he lasted less than an inning.) From his gamelogs, I'd guess that Peralta is possibly on some sort of pitch limit, with a rough 90-105 threshold; they won't pull him at an exact count but will let him finish an inning. He was laboring too much in that start against Washington to keep him in.

Brewers lineup:

Norichika Aoki RF
Rickie Weeks 2B
Ryan Braun LF
Aramis Ramirez 3B
Corey Hart 1B
Martin Maldonado C
Carlos Gomez CF
Jean Segura SS
Wily Peralta P

In the bullpen:

Jose Veras pitched 1 inning (22 pitches) last night and 1 inning (11 pitches) Tuesday.
Brandon Kintzler pitched 1 inning (18 pitches) last night and 0.2 inning (9 pitches) Tuesday.
Francisco Rodriguez pitched 1 inning (12 pitches) last night.
Jim Henderson pitched 0.2 inning (7 pitches) Tuesday.
Kameron Loe pitched 1.1 innings (19 pitches) Tuesday and 0.1 inning (19 pitches) Monday.
Manny Parra pitched 2 innings (48 pitches) Monday.
Josh Stinson pitched 1.2 innings (34 pitches) Monday.
John Axford pitched 0.1 inning (4 pitches) Sunday.
Tyler Thornburg pitched 3 innings (37 pitches) Saturday. Livan Hernandez pitched 0.2 inning (34 pitches) Saturday.