Milwaukee Brewers 8 Cincinnati Reds 1 Rapid Response

The Milwaukee swept the Reds with a 8-1 victory today.

Zack Grienke pitched a dominant seven innings, with ten strikeouts, and only giving up two hits and one run. I love how the pitching staff is trying to 1-up each other.

Yuniesky Betancourt has had errors in three consecutive games.

Casey McGeehe is hitless in his last 15 AB, and Taylor Green's hitless streak is at 10.

Schafer got his first hit! Roenicke must have been reading this blog.

How about the speed in the outfield in the 9th (Schafer, Gomez, Morgan). When Nyjer Morgan is your left fielder, you have got some speed.

Nice job by Gomez getting a two-hit game (including that homer). If he can provide any kind of offensive contribution at all (even a .240/.290/.400 type line) with the speed that he has, and his defensive skills, he can be a very dangerous weapon.

Aren't you glad that we have Braun for the rest of his career? 3/4 today raised his batting average to .336.

Milwaukee Brewers 6 Cincinnati Reds 3 Rapid Response

Every games recap here at the Blurb will be done in two phases:

1. The Rapid Response will usually be posted within one hour of the completion of the game (Player of the Game finalists will be named)
2. The Full Recap will be posted the next day. The point of this is to sleep on the game before I write a full recap, so as to better objectively cover the game (Player of the Game named)

Here is the Rapid Response.

Brilliant move by Ron Roenicke by starting Mark Kotsay today. Kotsay probably should have gone 3-4 today if it weren't for Brandon Phillips amazing catch.

The sixth spot contained two players with sizable hitless streaks Jerry Hairston Jr. (0 hits in his last 18 AB's), and Taylor Green (0 hits in his last 10 AB's).

I wish they would let Logan Schafer bat sometime, or at least let him play in the field (maybe they did and I missed it) instead of always only having him pinch-run. It would be refreshing to see him instead of Carlos Gomez in one of these garbage games.

Interesting decision to let Lucroy catch the 9th, either Roenicke has confidence in Lucroy's catching ability to let him catch in the 9th instead of Kottaras, or he just wants Lucroy to get some more practice. Maybe all of this speculation about Kottaras being a better catcher than Lucroy is wrong?

Congrats on entering the 30-30 club Ryan Braun. You are only the second player in Brewer history to accomplish this tremendous feat. The other player was Tommy Harper who did it in 1970.

Also congrats on 40 consecutive saves for John Axford only two more to get to half of Eric Gange's 84 consecutive saves.

Pre-Game Prediction: Brewers 5 Reds 4

Result: Brewers 6 Reds 3

Record: 1-0

Hey, at least I got the winner, and the runs scored correct

Finalists for Players of the Game

Ryan Braun, Randy Wolf, Mark Kotsay, John Axford

Sorry this is up so late, more coverage from tonight's game tomorrow, including the Player of the Game award.

Please Comment and Go Brewers.