Brewers sleepwalk through spring finale, lose to White Sox 16-1

WP: Chris Volstad (1-0); LP: Nick Ramirez (0-1); Save; ah, no; Home runs: Mil - Nick Franklin (3); CWS - none

Box Score

Perhaps the Milwaukee Brewers (19-10-2) just left early and loaned their uniforms to the REAL sandlot group to take on the Chicago White Sox (16-12) today in Glendale. That might explain the 16-1 drubbing they took at the hands of the Chisox.

(The following quote is tongue-in-cheek...I think.)

Or perhaps they WERE out celebrating into the wee hours after clinching their first Cactus Cup title in 41 years. In any case, the White Sox hit early, often, and effectively; the Brewers hardly hit at all, and Milwaukee also contributed an error.

If you read Sunday Sundries today, please go back and erase the section about the Brewers’ pitching staff and their standing in the Cactus League statistics. I’m certain that they are no longer relevant.

But they can’t take away the Cup!

Milwaukee totaled four hits. One of them was a sixth inning homerun by Nick Franklin. There you go! Hitting highlights are complete!

As for the White Sox, they didn’t score a single run in any inning. No, it they were going to score, it was going to be multiple runs...three in the second and third, four in the fourth, two in the sixth, and four more in the eighth. They amassed 19 hits, and 13 of their players had at least one hit. They had no single run innings, but they had 16 singles (and three doubles).

Should we detail the pitching lines? If you want all of the gory details you can check out the box score above, but let’s list the good outings on here (it’ll be brief): Josh Uhen had a perfect ¹⁄₃ of an inning with a strikeout, and Craig Counsell was quoted as saying that the UWM alum hit 97 mph on the radar gun; Jacob Barnes had a scoreless inning with one hit allowed; J.J. Hoover gave up a hit and a walk in his scoreless inning; Jeremy Jeffress allowed a hit and notched a strikeout in an inning; Tristan Archer allowed a hit but got the final out in the eighth to stem the tide at 16.

So it’s on to Houston for Monday and Tuesday games against the world champion Astros. Milwaukee will go with Brent Suter in his final tune-up for the regular season, and the Brewers will face the Astros’ Lance McCullers, who has struggled to a 3-0, 0.50 ERA, 0.89 WHIP with 21 strikeouts in 18 innings. And he’s their eighth starter.