There are 94 days until Opening Day!

Happy New Year everyone! Oh, sorry. I'll write more quietly. I'm sure some of you are battling some raging hangovers. In fact, I probably am too. I wrote this yesterday and am setting it to auto-publish. I'm probably still passed out somewhere. I just hope I wake up with clothes on this time...

Anyway! We're kicking off the new year with a count down to Opening Day. I'm going to have a new article up for you everyday from now until MLB's Opening Day--April 4. That's 94 days from now. I was trying to think of a theme and I decided to just randomly pick a stat, event, or maybe even jersey number represented by the number of days left until opening day. Today we're 94 days away and I decided to look at the game in which Ryan Braun hit his 94th home run.

The game in question was against the San Diego Padres on August 13th, 2009. People had high hopes for that season after the Brewers broke their postseason drought in 2008. However coming into this game the Brewers were 55-58 and a distant---7.5 games back--third to the damn St. Louis Cardinals. The Padres were 49-66.

Cesar Carrillo (RHP) was the Padres starter in that game. He went 2.1 innings after giving up 8 earned runs, including 3 home runs. It was his first major league appearances. He made 2 more starts after this game, but that would be the end of his major league career. To date at least. He is only 31 and played in the Mexican league last year. He could make it back some day. Stranger things have happened. Just ask Rich Hill.

Starting for the Brewers that day was LHP Manny Parra. He fared a good deal better than Carrillo. This was back when we still had hope--well some of us had hope--that Parra could be the left-handed compliment to Yovani Gallardo at the top of the Brewers rotation for years. Alas, that would not come to pass. In this game he lasted 5.2 innings. He gave up 6 earned runs, including 2 home runs. He also got a base hit and drove in a run.

Ryan Braun's 94th home run would come in the third inning. Carrillo was still pitching at this point. He hit Craig Counsell to put a runner on in front of Braun. His 2-run home run would put the Brewers up 6-0. I don't think I'll ever get tired of stumbling upon games where current Brewers played alongside now manager Craig Counsell. I don't know why but it's still kind of funny and surreal to me.

You'd think after going up 6-0 on the lousy Padres that this would have been a blow out, but that's not really the case. In classic Brewers fashion they gave up a ton of runs as well. In the end they would prevail, though, by a score of 12-9. You can see the Win Probability Chart here on FanGraphs.

By the way, if you have an idea for something that goes with an upcoming number feel free to leave your suggestion in the comment section.