Brewers 5, Nationals 10: You're not helping, Yovani

Win: Yovani Gallardo (6-8)
Loss: Jordan Zimmerman (12-3)

HR: Harper (13), Weeks (9), Francisco (10)

MVP: Aramis Ramirez (.019 WPA)
LVP: Yovani Gallardo (-.345 WPA)

Fangraphs Win Expectancy Graph

Boxscore

Yovani Gallardo sort of helped the Brewers today, just not in the preferred method. Gallardo had his worst outing of the season, allowing eight earned runs to the Nationals in just three innings. He allowed nine hits and two walks while striking out two batters and just looked all sorts of bad. So in a way, he helped. The Brewers are one loss closer to a high draft pick.

Unfortunately, it would probably be more beneficial if he upped his trade value by having good outings. This is not going to make a team say "Boy, we ought to give up a top prospect for that guy".

But then, it's almost a certainty at this point that the Brewers will have a high draft pick in 2014. Whether or not Doug Melvin will trade Gallardo is questionable at best. So I guess maybe Gallardo was just playing it safe.

Anyway, Gallardo blew the game early and the Brewers offense did what they could to come back. The team scored two runs in the fifth, then two more in the sixth inning on back-to-back homers from Rickie Weeks and Juan Francisco. Francisco had two hits and scored two runs in this game, pushing his OPS since June 14 up to 1.034.

The Brewers scored one more run in the seventh as Aramis Ramirez doubled in Carlos Gomez. Johnny Hellweg then gave up a single, a walk, and a double, along with an error by Jean Segura thrown in for good measure, en route to allowing two runs in the eighth inning, ending any real hopes of a Brewers comeback.

The Brewers and Nationals play again tomorrow at 6:05 CT. Wily Peralta gets to face off against Stephen Strasburg. That should be a disaster.